uor Chiara, now Carmelite, many years
ago wrote this. It is prophetic of this Jubilee, where on Christmas Eve,
last night, Pope John Paul II opened the Holy Doors of St
Peter's Basilica. This morning my parish priest, an Olivetan
Benedictine monk, preached on Christ as the Door, which we
enter through reading the Gospel, through living Christ, through living
Christ in Christ's Prayer. At this Christ Mass I thought of
Simone Martini's diptych, its two leaves like pages of a
book, of a Bible, and like doors, like the Holy Door,
through which in medieval legend the face of Christ floated
into the Basilica of St John Lateran. Pages of the Alpha and
Omega, of Birth and Death, which reflect each other; on
closing, Death becoming again Birth.

Simone Martini, Madonna and
Pieta`, Museo Horne, Florence

{ I first met Suor Chiara
on the bus coming up to Settignano. I showed her the Julian
booklets using this diptych and she was delighted. Their
Father Founder, don Divo Barsotti, deeply loves the writings
of Julian of Norwich. The Community flung open its doors and I
was welcomed as an Anglican Hermit into their midst. At the
same time a friend in Florence told me of four years before
having read an essay on prayer. I asked her for a copy and she
gave it to me. To my joy it was written by Suor Chiara, when
she was all of twenty-two. I asked permission to translate it
for the Internet. I then shared it with a group of
English-speaking ladies living in Italy belonging to Father
Henry Nolan, S.J.'s prayer group, by publishing it in a
booklet having for cover the mosaic from Ravenna of two doves
drinking water from a fountain. From that booklet we each in
turn drank, and read aloud, these lovely words. Julian wrote
down Christ's word, spoken to her 'interiorly', in blood red . Here,
Suor Chiara's words of emphasis, both in Italian and in
English, shall be written in the
blue of refreshing water .

{ It is the Lord who
speaks. He stands continually by the door of our soul and He
knocks. If we listen to His voice calling to us and fling open
the door to Him, then He will enter into that house to dine
with us. And we do not even have to be concerned about the
meal, because He thinks of that: He gives Himself as our
banquet.

His joy is
totally repaid in the friendship that begins with those who
welcome Him.

{ We can stay
with Him, speak with Him, as one friend to another. The Lord
calls all to this deep intimacy with Himself: He has never
thought of dividing his friends between contemplatives and
activists. All of us are drawn to be great contemplatives,
because the contemplative life is not a life of ecstasy,
averse to concrete reality, but a life in which, above all
else, what counts is God, God alone. And the substance of this
life is principally Prayer: a
time consacrated only to the Lord, heart to heart, a meeting
between you and God alone.

{ It is enough to have
such faith in Him that you can spend one hour at His feet. We
can be certain that when we leave all for Him, we obtain much
more and much better for ourselves and for others than we
could ever obtain through our own poor efforts. Now Prayer
remains a 'Mystery': it is difficult to understand its immense
value and its true fecundity in building the Kingdom of God in
the midst of Mankind.

{ Sometimes it is so
difficult to pray. Yet, even if we are tired, if we remain
faithful in prayer, it will always become less burdensome. It
will bore us only if we abandon it; if we are constant we will
obtain the grace of tasting, of joying, in the Presence of the
Lord in Prayer. The more we persevere, the more we will know
Him and our being with Him will be sweet and restful, because
He will be sweet and restful, because He loves us. And what
else do we want than to be loved? The more we multiply,
despite all the obstacles of our hurried day and despite the
temptations to laziness, the moments in which we seek the Lord
to hear Him, the more His answer will be felt, and the more
will we feel that the Spirit of the Lord carries us and guides
us within and through the happenings of our lives. But it is
necessary to be faithful; and it is also necessary to have
some silence, to lay our worries to rest, to have more trust
in the Lord who holds our lives in His hands. Above all, it is
necessary to withdraw from all impatience, waiting for the
fruits of grace to ripen in their due season. It is needful to
withdraw from agitation; even from fighting distractions
(which are natural!), what is wanted is humility and serene
perseverance. And then what is wanted is the complete desire
to treasure the words the Lord would say to us and to fulfil
them.

{ Acontemplative soul
lives in continual conversation with God, not only in
privileged times of prayer, but also while doing the most
ordinary tasks. In fact, when prayer is ended, the soul
continues to speak with God: the sense of His presence in
us is already to be face to face with the Lord filled with
love that certainly does not hinder our work, instead
gives it strength and fulfilment. Today we speak so much
of dialogue (ecumenical dialogue, the dialogue about the
human condition, etc.), but first of all I think we need
to rediscover the essence of the dialogue with God. If we
speak first with Him, before we speak of Him to other
people, perhaps we would know what things to say that
would be truly helpful to them.Prayer is simply a conversation with the Lord, without
labouring to construct sophisticated phrases. The Lord
appreciates far more what we wish to say to Him than the way
in which we speak of them to Him. The Lord loves familiarity
and smiles, He delights that we keep company with Him in joy.

{ Too
often, perhaps, we have chosen to begin to pray, but then,
encountering the usual difficulties, we have quickly given
up. Perhaps out of pride we have wanted immediately to come
to the summits of mystical Prayer, we even hoped to be freed
quickly from distractions and temptations. It is best to
begin in small ways in which we can be sure we can
persevere. It is the greatest act of love to tell our Lord
about our daily happenings, just as we might with a friend,
as to one's husband or to one's wife. The Lord already knows
about them, but it pleases Him to hear us tell of them,
setting forth our desires, our projects, our dislikes, joys
and difficulties. Is not the Lord about to help us overcome
them all? We can entrust to Him, with the greatest
confidence, all that troubles us. Thus our faith will grow
in His love, andthe
most absolute trust in God is the summit to which we are all
journeying.

{ The Lord gives us a
large liberty, because He loves us and nothing will make Him
indifferent to us. And He will leave none of us without an
answer: He speaks in the depths of the soul and at times we do
not distinguish immediately and clearly what He is saying, but
it is important that our thought should drink tranquilly of
His, until in the end it identifies with it.

{ We ought perhaps to
ask without hesitation. We can ask for ourselves and for
others. To ask for little perhaps would offend God, as if we
did not believe in His love for us. But ask in the most
complete trust and abandonment to His will, as happily as if
we had already obtained what we had requested.

{ Day after day, our
intimate conversation with the Lord will change our minds,
heal our eyes and have us begin to recognise and to
contemplate all the care that the Lord has for us and which we
now perceive so little. We will discover the amazing grace
that sustains us in all our difficulties, the blessings with
which He heaps up our days, His constant protection, the good
thoughts which He inspires in us, the sympathy and the trust
which He scatters like seed round about us.